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What Is a Chief Content Officer?
Contributed by Marc Honorof on June 13, 2013 in Operations & Supply Chain , Organization, Change, & HR , Strategy, Marketing, &
Sales
According to Wikipedia, “A chief content officer (CCO) is a corporate executive responsible
for the digital media creation and multi-channel publication of the organization’s content
(text, video, audio, animation, etc.) and is generally the highest ranking creative member of
the organization.
The Chief Content Officer is responsible for developing the organization’s content strategy,
choosing content development standards and content management systems, and ensuring
content is structured and semantically rich so to provide user-optimized content and
support publishing the content on multiple channels and devices (such as computers, smart
phones, tablets, eBook readers).”
Once a company makes the decision that the volume of content being created, distributed
and stored reaches critical mass, that’s a good time to consider adding this position. It will
become more and more essential as companies continue to shift to native advertising.

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Now we know what a CCO does. How do we know if someone is actually qualified to be a
CCO? What are the skill sets he/she needs and what background or experience do they need
to have to be successful running the content system at an organization?
The CCO needs to be a combination of publisher, social media marketer and
operations professional.
Why? Let’s break it down.
PUBLISHING is the process of production and dissemination of literature, music, or
information — the activity of making information available to the general public. In some
cases, authors may be their own publishers, meaning: originators and developers of content
also provide media to deliver and display the content for the same. Also, the word publisher
can refer to the individual who leads a publishing company or imprint or to a person who
owns a magazine.
Traditionally, the term refers to the distribution of printed works such as books (the “book
trade”) and newspapers. With the advent of digital information systems and the Internet,
the scope of publishing has expanded to include electronic resources, such as the electronic

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versions of books and periodicals, as well as micro-publishing, websites, blogs, video game
publishers and the like.
Publishing includes the stages of the development, acquisition, copy-editing, graphic design,
production – printing (and its electronic equivalents), and marketing and distribution of
newspapers, magazines, books, literary works, musical works, software and other works
dealing with information, including the electronic media.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETER refers to the process of gaining website traffic or attention
through social media sites.
Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts
attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. A corporate message
spreads from user to user and presumably resonates because it appears to come from a
trusted, third-party source, as opposed to the brand or company itself. Hence, this form of
marketing is driven by word-of-mouth, meaning it results in earned media rather than paid
media.
Social media is a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet access. Increased
communication for organizations fosters brand awareness and often, improved customer

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service. Additionally, social media serves as a relatively inexpensive platform for
organizations to implement marketing campaigns.
OPERATIONS : The CCO must be familiar with Operations to head up Digital Asset
Management (DAM) which consists of management tasks and decisions surrounding the
ingestion, annotation, cataloging, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets. Digital
photographs, animations, videos and music exemplify the target areas of Media Asset
Management (a sub-category of DAM).
Digital Asset Management Systems (DAMS) include computer software and hardware
systems that aid in the process of digital asset management. The term Digital Asset
Management (DAM) also refers to the protocol for downloading, renaming, backing up,
rating, grouping, archiving, optimizing, maintaining, thinning, and exporting files.
The Media Asset Management (MAM) sub-category of digital asset management mainly
addresses audio, video and other media content. The more recent concept of Enterprise
Content Management (ECM) often deals with solutions which address similar features but
in a wider range of industries or applications.

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So as we can see, this is a very complicated position that needs to be well versed in many
areas of the organization. Of course, since the CCO is an executive, normally reporting to the
CEO, he/she must have a very savvy management style. Being able to engage the various
departments and enroll them in the company’s vision with regard to its content strategy and
structure is new and will be somewhat foreign to most managers. Additionally, the CCO
must be familiar with all of these disciplines in order to build a top shelf team.
According to The Futurist, Geoffrey Colon predicts that “ Shake-ups in the C Suite: New
corporate leaders with new skills are on the way . Corporate futures will be shaped
by leaders adept in social networking, content management, data mining, and data
meaning. Look for such job titles as Earned Media Officer, Chief Content Officer, Open-
Source Manager, Chief Linguist, and Chief Data Scientist.”
So there we have it.
That’s what a Chief Content Officer does and what he or she needs to bring with them to
succeed at the job and move the company forward as our marketing paradigm keeps
shifting.

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About Marc Honorof
First Person Publishing is a content development company that has been working with writers, editors,
researchers, illustrators, animators and Emmy award-winning video production companies for over 2
decades, consistently producing engaging, entertaining and educational content in all formats, for all
platforms and on any budget. We have the ability to scale up for large projects with dedicated teams, or
become a trusted outsource partner when you’re in a crunch. If you need a subject matter expert, a ghost
blogger, articles, newsletters, or a product video or web series, that's what we do. Marc also consults to
brands and companies in the areas of content development, strategy and marketing as well as brand
publishing infrastructures and is selectively available for speaking engagements.

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